Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” she said. “This kind of stuff happens all the time. We’ll get you fixed up.”

I turned and looked out across the whorl of white and black, to where the lights shone on Paswegas Island, all but indistinguishable from the falling snow.

“Come on,” said Gryffin. He put his arm around me and pointed at the Good Tern. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

The others started toward the bar. I watched them go, then looked up at Gryffin.

He smiled, and for a fraction of a second he looked exactly like the young man in the photograph—not ecstatic, maybe, but still open to the possibility of happiness.

The possibility of something, anyway. I stared at him then slung my camera bag over my shoulder.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said, and we followed the others inside.

First and foremost, my gratitude to my agent, Martha Millard, and to Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, and Tina Pohlman, my editors at Small Beer Press and Harcourt.

Heartfelt thanks to those who read and commented on various drafts of this book: Jim Baker, John Clute, Ellen Datlow, Russell Dunn, Tess Gerritsen, Richard Grant, Bob Morales, Eddie and Tracee O’Brien, Peter Straub, Paul Witcover, Gary Wolfe.

To Steve Dunn, for the loan of his island.

To Russell Dunn, for exploring it with me, and for 30-plus years of seeing beauty in the bleak stuff.

For photographic expertise, Norman Walters.

For all things nautical, and for letting Magic Ghost stand in for Northern Sky , Bruce Bouldry.

For his experience of homicide investigative protocol, Raymond Jeffery Greene.

Most of all, love and thanks to John Clute, compass and True North.

Elizabeth Hand (elizabethhand.com) is the multiple-award-winning author of eight previous novels and three collections of short fiction. Since 1988, she has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World , among numerous other publications. She lives on the coast of Maine.

Visit www.lcrw.netfor information on additional titles by this and other authors.

Jeff VanderMeer for Amazon.com:Your novel Generation Loss introduces readers to a very eccentric and sometimes selfish photographer named Cass. Are all artists inherently selfish?

Hand:Yes. You can’t be an artist without being inherently self-involved, without believing that the world owes you a living, and that everything you do—anything, matter how sick or twisted or feeble or pathetic—is worthy of attention. This is the secret behind the success of stuff like American Idol and YouTube. This is the world Andy Warhol bequeathed to us.

Amazon.com:Isn’t it partially that selfishness that results in great fiction? Isn’t the antagonist of your novel in a way driven by selfishness?

Hand:I don’t think I’d call it selfishness, to be truthful. I think creating any real art depends on an intense amount of focus—of filtering out the rest of the world as much as you can, to sustain and then impart your own vision or secondary world—what John Gardner called “the vivid and continuous dream.” I think the antagonist of Generation Loss sees himself as being impelled by love—romantic love, carnal love, the pure love of artistic creation—not selfishness. Whereas Cass’s motivation is something far darker and more sinister than love. She’s seen the abyss; she lives there.

Amazon.com:Is Cass Neary a prototypical “bad girl”?

Hand:Well, she’s your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily-tattooed American female photographer. So, yeah.

Amazon.com:So this is definitely not what you’d call “chick lit”?

Hand:Umm, probably not. If it were a movie, it would have a NC-17 rating. Or maybe NR. Is Lolita considered chick lit? That book had a huge influence on me, especially with this novel. I always wanted to create a narrator like Humbert Humbert, someone utterly reprehensible and unsympathetic who still manages to command a reader’s attention and even an uneasy sympathy. I loved the idea of making a reader complicit with the crimes committed by a protagonist. The simple act of continuing to turn the pages makes you guilty by association.

Amazon.com:Did you have a particular artist in mind as the inspiration for the foul-smelling but visionary paintings in the novel?

Hand:No. That part I made up.

Amazon.com:C’mon. You’re not allowed to just make things up. Spill the beans.

Hand:No, I really didn’t have anyone in mind. There are elements of the work of photographers I admire—Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Sally Man, Joel-Peter Witkin—and of outsider artists like Henry Darger or Richard Dadd or Roky Erickson. But the whole concept of an artist creating his own emulsion paper—I thought of that, then researched it and learned that, indeed, some photographers work that way. I also consulted a photographic conservator who’s an acquaintance and asked him, Is this possible? He said yes, and I took it from there.

Amazon.com:Are people in Maine as mean toward tourists as you describe?

Hand:No. Just me. Though folks who work at the general store three doors down from me really do sometimes wear a T-shirt that reads THEY CALL IT TOURIST SEASON, WHY CAN’T WE SHOOT THEM? So, okay, me and them.

Amazon.com:Have you ever driven a tourist off your property with a shovel?

Hand:Not yet. But I would. A few years ago friend said he pictured me up on the Laurentian shield, threatening outsiders with a pitchfork. That’s pretty accurate.

Amazon.com:Weren’t you once a tourist?

Hand:Never. I lived in DC for 13 years, and worked for a long time at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum—Tourist Central. That effectively killed any sympathy I might ever have had towards them.

Amazon.com:What’s coming up for you?

Hand:Well, I’ll be doing some touring and readings for this book, and I hope to record the entire novel as a podcast/audio book—I’m very excited to be performing again. I’m presently at work on a YA novel about Arthur Rimbaud called Wonderwall , to be published by Viking, and am brooding on another novel that might be something along the lines of Generation Loss , or not. I get restless and like to shift gears a lot. So we’ll see.

Small Beer Press

www.lcrw.net

Copyright ©2007 by Elizabeth Hand

First published in 2007, 2007

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Hand. All rights reserved.

www.elizabethhand.com

Note: An excerpt from this book appeared in 2005 in Gargoyle 50, edited by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody.

Camera Lucida: Reflections On Photography by Roland Barthes, translation by Richard Howard, translation copyright 1981 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.